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Climate Follies

In what passes for tradition here at Wickersham’s Conscience, we spend the last week of each year thinking about the year that is ending, and making our wishes for the coming year. This blog post is firmly in that tradition. Despite the abject failures of his wishes for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, WC, in a continuing (and perhaps masochistic) triumph of…

Most readers here know WC makes fitful efforts at following up on issues raised here in earlier blog posts. It’s not journalism – WC doesn’t pretend to be a journalist – and as due diligence it’s kind of pitiful. But sometimes it’s interesting. Back in January, WC wrote about a “swatting” incident gone horribly wrong,…

One of the best ways to measure the cost of generating electricity is to divide the cost by the megawatt hours and life of the plant. By that measure, solar power is now the least expensive way to generate electricity. Even with the cost of storage – solar power doesn’t work in the night time,…

Wickersham’s Conscience ran this post back on December 17, 2017. It’s just one data point among many why Don Young needs to be voted out. The original post has been updated slightly, and a few typos fixed. The provision to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration and development was enacted into law…

Long-time Alaskans – those who were in Alaska in 1989 – know better than to trust anything Exxon Mobil says. Now it turns out Exxon Mobil will even lie to its own investors. WC isn’t even slightly surprised. The public has known for a few years that Exxon Mobil has been lying to the general…

Long time readers of Wickersham’s Conscience know that at irregular intervals WC tries to follow-up on topics discussed earlier. It’s not systematic and it’s certainly not due diligence, But readers may be interested in what has happened since on some subjects, so here’s an effort. Nor is it stump grinding, but we’ll get to that…

WC used to get quite a lot of email from a reader who was deeply concerned about possible radiation from the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster reaching Alaska and the west coast of North America. Right concern; wrong ocean and wrong point source. The islands of North and South Novaya Zemlya in the Kara Sea, north of…